At first crack of the keyboard, there’s nothing I have to say about this kid that better basketball minds haven’t already said. But something compels me to not just sit here and ignore it.
I mean, holy shit.
There, was that original? No? It wasn’t? Other people have written or said that about Steph Curry already? Sometimes taking as many as 10,000 words to do it?
Okay, let me try another angle.
WHY is Steph Curry so good at shooting a basketball? He’s “Shoot-a-tron 4000” a cyborg from the future!
I know the general gist of it. Tight rotation. Supremely solid mechanical fundamentals. A lightning quick rise-and-release.
But there’s obviously more to it than that. There’s an element of pure witchcraft that makes him so fascinating to watch. In short: 25 foot jumpers are easy shots for him.
EASY.
He knows how and when and why and where to release them, in ways that continues to confound opposing teams and defenders. Poor Oscar Robertson. Right when the old coot popped up to give a loud “MEH” to Curry and the Warriors, Steph goes and does THAT on Saturday night.
“Mr. Robertson, the tailor called. Your clownsuit will be ready for pickup tomorrow by 5.”
The best any skeptic can do about Curry and the Warriors, is that he benefits greatly from the style, flow, and surrounding talent of his team. They might say that if you plopped Curry down into a more plodding, down-tempo team – minus the almost as lethal Klay Thompson stretching the court from the other side – that Curry then, would be, well….. I guess just “great” not “All Universe.”
My gut feeling says: “Not so much” to that.
I think Steph Curry acts as like a powerful junkyard electro-magnet, warping the entire basketball court and defenses in his direction at all times. Every ball-screen defense changes dramatically for Curry, because, as mentioned: a 25-FOOTER IS AN EASY SHOT FOR HIM!
While I hope we don’t have to see the Warriors function without Curry for any extended period due to injury, it would provide an interesting “control sample” to stack up side-by-side with what this team is doing now.
In the meantime, let’s return to my fundamental question: WHY. Why is he so supernaturally good at shooting a basketball? Does he have a “secret sauce” that only he knows? I get it that genetics, and his former NBA sniper dad can’t be discounted.
Curry’s other athletic genius is his dribbling, and it synergizes with that absurdly lethal jumper to leave defenders looking stupid and hopeless. If you watch the Curry 101 Montage below – and you’d be an idiot not to – then you’ll probably get the same chicken-skin feeling I did.
This…. this is video game stupid at this point. It’s awesome. It’s the very reason we are all sports fans. This is shit, you just can’t make up.
2 Comments
Steph's mom
1. Physique: Very few starters in the NBA ever with his body. Even the smaller guys you can than think of bulked up. He’s like a 90’s waif- a stoned Delonte West.
2. The last “sham WOW” point guard play was Steve Nash and his two MVP’s – even though he only deserved one. My take is that he played the position like is supposed to be played. Pushing the pace, constant motion, looking for teammates, make threes and scoring lots of points. Curry does a lot of the same stuff with a better shot.
3. Steve Kerr mentioned Mark Price as an underrated point guard on ESPN’s Open Court show. You want to see full speed racing, on the dime three point jump shooting…Priceless.
Justin Stern
Great post. I actually heard this weekend that the video game NBA 2K is having trouble keeping up with him, that people are mad the video game steph curry can’t even do what he does in real life. The guy is just ridiculous.